Prominent Deal Lawyer Jim Woolery to be Cadwalader’s Chairman

Prominent deal lawyer Jim Woolery will be the next chairman at Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft LLP, the law firm he joined last February after a two-year foray into the banking world at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

The move, which the firm announced Thursday morning, was not unexpected. Currently the firm’s deputy chairman, Mr. Woolery has long been interested in running a law firm, according to former colleagues at Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP, where he was among a group of younger partners who brought a more aggressive style to that firm’s mergers and acquisitions practice.

Mr. Woolery will replace current Cadwalader chairman Chris White, who will oversee the transition this year and step down from that role on Jan. 1, 2015.

Longtime Cadwalader partner Pat Quinn, co-chair of the firm’s capital markets department, will become the firm’s managing partner and focus on running the firm’s operations.

The plan, Mr. Woolery said in an interview on Wednesday, is keep Cadwalader a manageable size while focusing on quality work and presenting clients with forward-looking advice not just on current transactions, but on future moves that could benefit their businesses.

“We have been able to get some market-leading transactions,” Mr. Woolery said, and “our capital markets and securitization business has really been screaming in the last several quarters.”

Mr. Woolery’s arrival at Cadwalader last year was intended in part to boost the firm’s corporate practice. He brought with him the legal work on the $24.9 billion deal to take Dell Inc. private. The firm has also worked on matters involving Air Products and Chemicals Inc. (which Mr. Woolery advised during his time at Cravath) and Elan Corp.

“For Jim, it’s very much an outward-facing role” that will focus on clients and markets, Mr. White said in an interview on Wednesday. He said that Mr. Quinn, also a member of the firm’s management committee, will have “a very inward-facing, partner-centric role.”

Cadwalader has more than 450 lawyers in eight offices in the U.S. and abroad. The firm had $466 million in revenue in 2012, according to figures compiled by the American Lawyer magazine.

“We want to be on the high end of the market,” Mr. Woolery said. “We are not going to try and do every kind of deal, you are not going to see us adding hundreds and hundreds of lawyers. We are very clear on where we want to go.”